FIRST SEARCHABLE TV WEBSITE LETS VOTERS COMPARE CANDIDATES AND ISSUES BY VIEWING VIDEO OVER THE INTERNET

MediaSite.net Informs Pittsburgh-Area Voters During Historic County Executive Race

PITTSBURGH, PA--May 14, 1999--Busy voters who want to review candidate positions to make an informed choice in the Tuesday, May 18th primary race for the newly created position of Allegheny County Executive are turning to MediaSite.net (www.mediasite.net), the first website using Searchable TV technology to allow voters to search and view political candidate positions using a variety of broadcast video clips.

The MediaSite.net searchable video website revolutionizes the way voters receive information about political candidates. Video footage is available from CBS affiliate KDKA-TV 2’s news broadcasts, candidate debates, and ads from the past several months, giving voters a single source for comparing the contenders’ views from a variety of coverage that has appeared over time. For example, a voter can go to the site, search on economic development or taxes, and view all of the candidates’ positions on specific topics within newscasts, during debates or in advertisements. Voters can also search for information by the candidates’ names (Dawida, Dunn, Roddey, and Wecht).

"The Internet has revolutionized the way information is shared, giving users access to a vast knowledge base, regardless of where they are located or what time of the day or night it is," said Mark Juliano, president and CEO of  MediaSite, Inc. "Just as text-based search engines allow users to query the Internet for specific topics of interest, the video search technology used on MediaSite.net lets users search and view TV content on the Internet, which was previously only available at a specific time." For instance, users can log into MediaSite.net at midnight to review the 11:00 p.m. broadcast news, or peruse days worth of newscasts that contain news footage on a particular topic of interest.

About The MediaSite.net Searchable Video Website
MediaSite.net is the only video website with searchable stock footage (previously shot video clips purchased by filmmakers or ad agencies), TV news and education content coupled with V-commerce (TM) (video E-commerce) ordering and billing. MediaSite.net and customized Media Sites built for MediaSite’s customers use advanced speech recognition, image and face matching technologies to make video as easy to search on the Internet as text is today.

The Growth of Searchable TV on the Internet
The Internet is becoming an increasingly important medium for customized video news and information delivery. Over 50 million streaming media players (i.e. RealNetworks RealPlayer and Microsoft Windows Media Player) are installed with more added daily. MediaSite.net goes beyond broadcasting TV content on the Internet by allowing viewers to watch what they want, when they want, from anywhere. Tools and technology from MediaSite.net are also in development to make zero time delay Internet-based Searchable TV a reality. With this kind of Searchable TV, users can search up to the minute TV news or stored programming, as it is broadcast.

About  MediaSite
MediaSite, Inc. is the leading developer of software, systems and services to create searchable video and audio Media Sites. MediaSite operates a Web site (www.mediasite.net) and builds customized Media Sites, which offer searchable video with e-commerce purchasing. MediaSite also offers the MediaSite System (TM), a core set of software, systems and services required to develop a superior Media Site. With the MediaSite System, video becomes as searchable as text. The unique feature of MediaSite technical approach is the integrated application of speech recognition, language understanding and image understanding technologies based on software components of Carnegie Mellon University's Informedia Digital Video Library Project, an $8 million public-private sponsored research project. For more information, visit www.mediasite.com.